Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Darwinism destroyed the concept of natural law. If the universe is evolving in autonomous, unpredictable ways, in terms of such random phenomena as genetic mutation, there can be no such thing as natural law. No social order is permanent; no legal order is permanent. The laws change as society changes.”
Gary North

“The operation of government intensifies ethnic divisions and escalates social conflict. Nationalism, whether defined along ethnic or ideological lines, involves one group of people ruling over another. As people struggle for advantage, conflict ensues. And politicians will exploit this conflict to deflect criticism of their destructive policies.
Anarchy, by contrast, entails that no person rule over another. People are not entitled to special rights based on the ethnicity, gender or other category they find themselves in. So long as they do not violate the ability of others to exercise maximum individual liberty they are allowed to live where and how they wish.”
Darian Worden

“A nation’s government is the creation of its people, the thinking goes. It represents them, and its interests are aligned with the interests of 'its' people. The notion that those in government have their own agendas that have nothing to do with the well-being or expressed interests of 'the people,' and that they pursue these agendas to the detriment of 'the people,' is heresy in this worldview. It is a worldview that persists despite an endless parade of corruption and broken campaign promises to demonstrate its fallacy.”
Bretigne Shaffer

“The Internet lets people relate to each other purely as individuals, instead of viewing themselves as American or French or Brazilian, seeing themselves as citizens of some nation-state. I think in the future people are likely to see each other as citizens of informal organizations – not countries – and will seek each other out on the Internet and join together on that basis.”
Doug Casey

“Abolishing the institution of slavery was a good start, but only a start. Coercive government is in fact nothing but slavery by stealth; when a ruling elite can take (or direct) as much as they please of your time, your actions, and your money, then de facto slavery is in season. That some people may have voted for a particular part of what transpires is no more helpful to the victims than was the divine right of kings and other fantasy justifications for control of the many by the few. Likewise, that some slavemasters may be kinder than others does not make the slavery itself right or acceptable, or safe for the slaves of even the kindest master; masters come and go, and again, the tendency is for outright psychopaths to rise to Power at the expense of more compassionate souls.”
Glen Allport

“Of all the ‘ideas’ out there, statism has shown itself to be the ultimate ‘idealistic’ and ‘Utopian’ dream. It has been tried, in every imaginable permutation, for thousands of years and it always fails. Always. Why think ‘next time we'll get it right’ against all evidence?”
Kent McManigal

“Anyone who wants to vote probably shouldn't be allowed to vote. Voting is the first step towards zombification - trying to get something without actually working for it. People who can't get what they want by honest trade or innocent persuasion turn to the ballot box. The next thing you know they're voting for Hugo Chavez.”
Bill Bonner

“The hubris of government is that multi-thousand page bills can actually accurately describe and account for the complexity of the real world, where hundreds of millions of economic actors interact in virtually infinite combinations.”
From CivilSocietyTrust.org

“Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generation which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”
Thomas Paine

“Limiting the power of the state, once it has been granted a territorial monopoly of legislation, is impossible, a self-contradictory goal. To believe that it is possible to limit government power – other than by subjecting it to competition, i.e., by not allowing monopoly privileges of any kind to arise in the first place – is to assume that the nature of Man changes as the result of the establishment of government (very much like the miraculous transformation of Man that socialists believe to happen with the onset of socialism).”
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

“The public acceptance of war is the default position that perpetuates its insanity. ‘Truth’ is the input that "does not compute" within the logic of the war system, and the state undertakes every precaution – such as censorship, labeling documents and other discomforting facts as ‘top secret’ – to silence any doubts that might be raised as to the validity of the propagandized campaign on behalf of death and destruction.”
Butler Shaffer

“Many of the people who argue for the necessity of the state believe that humankind is essentially petty and cruel and thus make the case for a centralized political system to maintain order, peace, and prosperity. But if humankind is all of those naughty things, then how are the people in government any different? If people are profit-seeking and brutal, then they don’t become magnificently well-intentioned and public-spirited after joining the state.”
Ross Kenyon

“We need to announce that we do not accept the legitimacy of the regime. This regime is blatantly, openly and proudly violating our natural rights. It is not legitimate within the clear understanding of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. Thus, you have no moral obligation to support it. Withdrawing moral support for the regime is critical since public support is the very basis of the regime’s power.”
James Ostrowski

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From the Darkness:

"The battle for food is a matter of national security."
An unidentified official from the Venezuelan Food Ministry.

“So I say to my friends on the Internet, relax. Take a look at the bill. And this is something that we need to protect our country.
Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman, defending, a bill that would give President Obama a "kill switch" to shut down parts of the Internet.

“So, we probably won’t have to have that test of whether or not there’s [constitutional] authority. Certainly, he had some moral authority that they responded to.”
Sen. Ben Nelson, when asked whether President Obama has the constitutional authority to have BP surrender the stockholders’ money without due process of law.

“I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of pre-emption and not of retaliation.”
Shabtai Shavit, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, pushing for a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

“The CBP’s work is grounded in the fundamental belief that government should work to improve the lives of the people it serves. The CBP maintains a deep commitment to ensuring that public policies and programs respond effectively to the needs and interests of lower-income individuals, families, and communities throughout California.”
From the California Budget Project website. [Yes, those “programs” worked so well that now your state is bankrupt.]

“Mr. President, I want to see the boot on the neck of BP tonight. I want to see some finger-pointing whether it's in your personality or not and it's OK tonight to act kind of like a dictator and call the shots saying this is the way it's going to be. BP has lied to the citizens of this country long enough. It's been one misstep after another. One lie, one half-truth after another. It's time for the President of the United States to lay it out there in full force for the citizens of the United States and make it very clear that BP is going to make us whole, whole again and whole for a long time.”
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, before Obama’s speech about the Gulf Coast oil spill.

“In a way, Obama is standing above the country- above the world, a sort of God. He’s going to be bring all different sides together.”
Evan Thomas, MSNBC

“Right now the Germans are dragging their neighbours into deflation, which threatens a long phase of stagnation. And that leads to nationalism, social unrest and xenophobia. Democracy itself could be at risk.”
George Soros, economic and historical illiterate.

"Border security is primarily a responsibility of federal government […] we cannot have 50 different state legislations. It will not work."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano [Wrong, Janet. There’s absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that authorizes the federal government to secure state borders from immigrants.]

“The beginning of UAV flights over the west-Texas portion of our border with Mexico marks an important advancement for border security in our state. We are working hard to make round-the-clock surveillance the standard for all 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, pushing for more Big Brother surveillance drones in out skies.

"The strategy continues to have NATO's support and our forces will continue to carry it out. We will stay for as long as it takes to do our job."

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, reacting to the naming of Gen David Petraeus as Head Killer in charge of Afghanistan genocide [What exactly IS the job and how will you know when it is completed?]

"Sadly we need disasters like this [BP oil rig explosion] to show people. Some people don't believe in climate warming - like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust.”

Paul McCartney

"I call on all human rights activists in the world - go to Tehran, that's where there is a human rights violation."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, enforcer of the murderous blockade of Gaza.

"The public has nothing to fear with this legislation and the way the police will use this legislation. It really comes down to a case of common sense and officer discretion. If you're approaching that fence line, we want to know why. We're bound by duty to protect the people that are going be within that fence line. If you refuse to tell us [why you're there], then we have to assume that your purposes are not of a peaceful nature."
Sgt. Tim Burrows of the G8/G20 Integrated Security Unit, defending new regulations, specifically empowering those policing the G8/G20 summit.

“If this were Texas, a state that borders Mexico, I would have to look twice at this, but it’s Arizona, a state that is removed from the border…”
Peggy West, geography-challenged Milwaukee county supervisor, during debate on a measure about boycotting the state of Arizona.

"Students who spent their valuable, precious time diving through dumpsters before this event in order to silence someone ... what a wasted resource."
Sarah Palin, commenting on students that found part of her speaking contract in a dumpster. [Hey, Legs- Just who is attempting to “silence” anyone by seeking the truth? And for how long now have you had the thouroughly Marixst attitude that people are “resources?”]